First, there's the free-form brainstorming in my sketch book, where I quickly play with ideas, where anything goes, and a few gems arise from hours of sketching. I really mean speed sketching. You can NOT care about aesthetics or else the ideas stop coming. It's all about producing a new sketch every few minutes.
The second step is creating a light pencil outline on watercolor paper. In this step I decide on final positioning of shapes and layout. Many details are left out but the road map is clear.
Pencil: I use a cheap Papermate Sharpwriter #2. It is easy to hold, light and erases well.
Paper: 140 lb cold pressed Arches paper has just the right grit and texture. The hot pressed is too smooth, and the "rough" doesn't allow detail to be added.
Watch 1st 25 seconds to see light pencil sketch. After the 25 seconds, you can watch as I go over the same sketch with a pen (see next step below).
The third step is my illustrativ- style pen work, with my trusty Koh-I-Noor Rapidosketch .25MM pen marking over the pencil. I've tried different thicknesses (smaller tips break on paper with a reasonable amount of grain, and larger tips can't impart the detail).
The goal of this step is to add texture to impart character, personality and interest to the work.
My trusted and favorite pen
Finally, I paint translucent watercolors over the images with a very limited and selective palette to give the breath of life to the painting. I use a variety of brands, experimenting with different paints constantly discovering new properties that will add a special touch to the painting. This is where it all comes together, the most exciting part of the creation.
My watercolor paints
Only the last two steps are captured on the video. The time lapse technique that I am using condenses 6 hours into one minute. So that 3 minute video you watch is around 18 hours of work. That is 18 hours out of roughly 40 hours of work for each painting.
Timeline for Painting steps
1
Idea development / rough sketches
2 hours
2
Pencil sketch
8 hours
3
Pen work
16 hours
4
Idea development / rough sketches
14 hours
Total
40 hours
I use a Canon Powershot SD850 IS in Time Lapse mode, set to take an image every 2 seconds. I use a 4 GB HDSD card in the camera so I don't have to download the card very often.. I use Adobe Premiere to edit the already time-lapsed video and speed it up another 10 times (depending on footage). This results in roughly 6 hours to one minute of video.
